Chapter 11: Slipping the Tether

Spike lost most of Thursday. He wasn’t sure how. Felt so good, he didn’t particularly care, but it puzzled him whenever he roused from his walking dream, checked his watch, and found another two or three hours had gone someplace. Maybe south--south sounded good to him. Warm there. Good place for the untethered hours to go. Then the fog would roll back and blank out the puzzlement.

Once, the fog lifted and he found himself fighting all-out against a trio of Tethys demons: many-limbed, with tough black shiny chitin, spurs at the joints, had to go for the eyes on those, then get a blade in under the skull plate and separate it from the thorax; looking around the big indigo-dark temple space for something with a cutting edge….

Another time, his opponent was an ugly stinking troll in furs and leathers and odd scraps of cloth, and he was keeping clear of the huge hammer, indifferently in and out of dappled sunlight on a hillside, the sun chartreuse and empty of harm, and almost got himself mashed flat trying to puzzle that one out, wondering what’d become of the Tethys or had he done for them? Weapon, came the insistent thought: had to find a weapon, don’t worry about the Tethys, dealing with the troll now, and that was no problem, not really: just get uphill of him, dodge the hammer swing, and go right at him, hard and fast, maybe knock him off balance and rolling. Anyway, tear his throat out. Try not to get hit in the long while it would take the troll to collapse. Had all the weapon he needed, he was a fucking vampire!

The minute he thought that and started to act on it, the hillside and the strange sun were gone and the next he knew, he was perambulating along the sewers. Marks at the junctions told him where he was, and a glance at his watch told him it was already past the time the Slayer was due for her workout.

Some way, he’d blown off the whole day’s agenda, yet couldn’t bring himself to care. Actually, he felt most inclined to get extremely drunk and blow the rest of it. The agenda--even the thought of the agenda--bored him stiff. And the thought of a long session with the translation was even worse. Sit and stare at a screen for hours? What had possessed him to agree to that? Very no fun whatever. Fighting Tethys, now that was more like it. He wondered how that had all come out and how he’d missed the finish.

Take on Digger, maybe: Digger would have enough fighters by now to put up a good scrap. There’d been a reason he hadn’t taken Digger on directly before now but he couldn’t bring it to mind.

He felt strange, stoned, and that puzzled him because that was Mike’s preferred impairment, not his. So maybe starting an all-out battle should be put off awhile. Stoned, his judgment wasn’t worth shit. Besides, the thought of fighting in Digger’s labyrinthine lair didn’t feel like fun, once he started considering it. Felt like an appealing trap. Put him off the idea somehow. Hell with it all. Just go up to Willy’s, take on the house. Drink himself paralytic afterward. But get someplace safe first, considering the blood price Digger had set on him.

He couldn’t think of any fun that didn’t drag waves of complications rolling in behind. Nothing simple and direct, the way he wanted.

Had to be hallucinating again: the Tethys’ cathedral, the troll and the hillside in the wrong colored light. Might better sideline himself and wait for the sense to come back.

Wished he could talk to Joyce, but he recalled she was gone, likely to where he’d never be, so fuck it. Likewise Dawn, whom he missed acutely: wanted her real bad to sort this for him, tell and confirm for him what was real, but that was a shut door too, couldn’t go there. Not Buffy, though: had to keep all the nonsense clear of her or like as not, she’d figure he’d slipped a cog and gone all crazy again, want to chain him up in the basement except the shackles were gone, no way to lock him down until the sense came back. Shackles, they’d been comforting in a way: locked down, he’d known he couldn’t hurt anybody who mattered. Didn’t have that worry on his mind. But she’d taken against them somehow so they were gone and he’d have to manage this all by himself.

Had to stay well clear of the Slayer. No help to be had there.

Seemed like every way he turned, he ran up against a blind wall. Rat in a maze, subtly herded along a path by finding everything else closed off and no way to get above it, figure how to go. Too stoned and fogged to see it plain, yet too driven by restlessness to stop where he was.

When he started battering the walls with his fists, the soothing fog slid back in, feeding him reassurance that none of it mattered and there was no need to hurt himself over it even though the hurt had felt good--like the beginnings of clarity. Feeding him pleasure, right now, that was an escape from choice. Didn't have to care about none of it, only drift and let the fog take him. Let himself be pushed wherever it was he was needed to go. Fog didn't want him tormented or uncertain. Liked him fine the way he was and would presently deliver him to more fighting and all things that satisfied his nature.

Couldn’t very well argue with that.

**********

It wasn’t the end of the world, Buffy thought, without a hand free to rub at her eyes because she was carrying a carton containing her pencil pot, half a dozen computer diskettes, a notebook, a few pens, and the six remaining squeeze bottles of smell down the school’s front stairs toward the SUV in the parking lot.

She’d only lost her job, and what was that? A part-time nothing, a make-work service usually performed unpaid by the head of the P.T.A., that she didn’t even belong to. It was really stupid to feel like the world’s utter failure, except that she did. So she was a stupid failure. Not to mention guilt: one Charissa Richardson, whose name wasn’t even on the roster, claimed she’d gone into the gym a virgin, on Tuesday, and left otherwise. The family doctor had confirmed her non-virgin status. A complaint of inadequate supervision had been lodged by the parents.

Not rape, Principal Doty had assured her. Youthful high spirits, poor judgment on everyone’s part. No one claimed otherwise. But better all around if appropriate action was seen to be taken and the person technically responsible for supervising that after school activity was sent away, presumably to the more structured environment of the business world. That might fend off a lawsuit, which the school really couldn’t afford under present circumstances. However, he was quite willing to provide a reference, should one be needed, since her job performance had been quite satisfactory except for this one regrettable lapse in judgment.

So the bottom line was that she was out, and so was her rowdy exercise/self-defense class.

She tossed the carton on the middle bench seat and slid the door shut. Then she turned against the vehicle, her face hidden in her bent arm, and bawled.

She’d been rejected. Was unwanted and disapproved of. Had Done Something Wrong. It was devastating. She couldn’t think through the ramifications. If she’d been told that losing her job meant that in two hours, marshals would arrive to seal and seize Casa Summers and dump them and their belongings out on the street, and that she’d have to go back to the horrible Double-Meat Palace and beg the manager for her old job back, she would have gulped, nodded numbly, and believed it.

Willow knew about catastrophes like this: once she’d gotten a B on an algebra exam and been inconsolable for weeks. But Buffy’s try to reach Willow by phone went unanswered. In class, perhaps: Buffy never could keep Will’s daytime schedule straight.

She next tried Spike, and that was even more frustrating, because you often had to wait through twenty or more rings before he’d pick up. This time, not even thirty brought a response.

Oh, why were the people you depended on never available when you really needed them?

Flinging the unresponsive phone onto the passenger side, Buffy turned on the ignition, shoved the gear shift, moved about five feet, then jammed the shift into Park while slamming on the brakes. Had to dive into her tote for tissues for an eye wipe and a nose-blow, in that order. Being an organized person, she had a small trash bag on the floor to dispose of the tissue wad. She took her foot off the brake while shoving the shift lever, and the SUV lurched forward.

The phone buzzed.

Everything jammed to a halt again. Buffy was too weepy and distressed to look for the caller ID: she just shoved the phone to her ear.

Anya’s voice blared, “Buffy, you have to get over here this instant, right away! Something terrible has happened!”

“What?” Buffy shrieked back, filled with horrible imaginings.

“The Chaos Stone has been stolen!”

“The what?”

“--and it’s all Willow’s fault. My life may be in danger! You have to come here right now and protect me and get it back!”

With no clear idea of what Anya was so wound up about, Buffy shoved the SUV back into gear and drove out of the school parking lot, scowling with Slayer determination, bumping heavily over the curb.

**********

Buffy had a vague recollection of the Chaos Stone: Angel had dug it up someplace, and it’d been used as a diversion during the closing of the Hellmouth, drawing away most of the Turok-han, clearing the way for her, Spike, and the SITs to get into the Hellmouth with nobody left to fight but the Bringers.

“But that’s not the point,” Anya declared, wringing her hands and pacing in front of a display of desiccated Hands of Glory. “It’s worth money. Lots of money!”

Buffy sat down at the big table. She wasn’t exactly glad of the distraction, but she was prepared to listen and try to understand what this had to do with her. “Remind me how you ended up with it.”

“Angel wanted it back, but Spike tossed it to me, and we both ran,” Anya explained, chin lifted righteously high. “I have it, so I own it. Or I had it…. And I had a buyer!” she wailed. “And now it’s gone!”

“What is the thingy, precisely?”

“The dial of a fixed dimensional portal that doesn’t exist anymore. So it doesn’t connect with anything. But it could be made to. Now, it’s just randomness, the keyhole of a door into noplace, everyplace. Energy blowing through like wind. It has an energy signature that demons are attracted to--particularly vamps. Metaphysical harmonics, or some such thing. Personally, I found it annoying, which was another reason I parked it elsewhere while I was shopping for a buyer. It set my teeth on edge.”

Looking around the shop, noticing the modifications made to the annex to repurpose the training room as retail space and pulling a slight frown on that account, though it was no surprise, Buffy asked, “It wasn’t here?”

“No, that’s what I’ve been telling you!” Anya flopped down in an adjoining chair, flinging her hands in agitation. “It’s best to be discreet about such things. You’d scarcely believe how unscrupulous some dealers in magical antiquities can be. So I certainly didn’t want it here: not nearly secure enough.” With hands clenched in effort, Anya forced herself to spit it out: “I engaged Olaf to look after it for me.”

“Your ex?” Buffy asked incredulously.

“He’s perfectly reliable. Well, stupid. And it was no imposition--all he had to do was keep it for me. And I paid him! Or would have, when it was time to collect it. And in that dimension, its shrieking was barely noticeable. No one should have been able to find it. Except Willow. I told Willow where it was. I was naïve and trusting, and now she’s betrayed me!”

“Slow down, Anya. How do you know it’s gone?”

Anya made a vexed face. “Well, I looked, of course! I generally pop over once a week, just to see how Olaf is getting on. A few drinks, a few laughs. It’s sociable! And it’s only a small interdimensional jump. Why shouldn’t I?”

“What does Olaf have to say about it?”

“Nothing. No Olaf, no stone. I came right back and phoned you.”

“Ahuh.” Buffy tucked away for further examination the possibility that Anya’s pop-in visits had been enough to alert even Olaf, who had an IQ well south of his blood pressure, that what was in his custody was valuable. “How valuable?”

“The current price is $ 100,000. And it was met, Buffy! I had a buyer!”

Buffy fanned herself. “That’s a big-ticket item, all right. But Anya--I don’t yet see how any of this has to do with me.”

“Well, there’s Willow: I admit she probably didn’t steal it herself, but she undoubtedly blabbed to somebody. And she’s your friend! And then there’s this Chaos Mage who wants to reopen the Hellmouth. I’d think that would concern you somewhat. And then--”

“Whoa! Whoa! Where did this come from?”

“Mike told me. Yes!” Struck by a thought, Anya dashed back to the main counter, got a yellow sticky out of the register, and dialed the phone, leaning on an elbow. After a long wait, she said, “It’s Anya. Yes, I realize you were probably asleep, but this is an emergency. Please come down now. Right away.” She listened, then said, “Yes, I’m quite aware that the sun is shining. There’s tunnel access in the alley, I’m sure-- Fine, that will be fine, I really appreciate--” Replacing the receiver, Anya remarked, “Vamps certainly can be cranky when you wake them up. I thought of Spike first, but I couldn’t reach him and besides, he’d want a finder’s fee. Mike will do just as well. Better.”

Buffy deduced that Mike wouldn’t require being paid.

While waiting for Anya to finish her call, Buffy had been wandering among the tables and displays, avoiding the Hands of Glory, for which she'd developed a fixed dislike. On the table nearest the shop door, half a dozen or so tiny one-ounce bottles were set out. Curly lettering identified them as "Sunnydale Seduction." On a nasty guess, Buffy opened one: sure enough, Willow's magicked smell. Repackaged.

"You're selling it?" Buffy demanded indignantly. "For" (she checked the sticker) "ten dollars an ounce?"

"Just because you have no retail sense doesn't mean nobody has," Anya retorted airily. "I was going to tell you, the next time we had a meeting. We haven't had one lately. So. You'll get your share. Or Spike Enterprises will. It's a sensible business arrangement. I don't know what you're so upset about."

"Did you ask anybody? Did you tell anybody?"

"Really, I can't see that it's important now, with everything else that's going on. Please wipe the bottle before you put it back: I can't sell it with your finger marks all over it."

Grumpily, Buffy swiped the tiny bottle on her sleeve, then thumped it down. It galled her that Anya was making money from what they were giving away for free. But she should have known better. For a moment, she considered requiring a finder's fee, that even Spike wasn't dim enough to pass by, according to Anya. But no. Regretfully, she decided that would be Wrong.

If this theft was part of the attempt to reopen the Hellmouth, it was her duty as the Slayer to prevent that from happening. The Council had made it abundantly clear that Slayers were not to be paid for doing their duty. Despite Spike’s often expressed contempt for that view, Buffy reluctantly accepted it even now, when she imagined her modest bank balance vanishing under a deluge of bills for lack of a paycheck.

“OK,” she said, settling back at the big table, “let’s see if I have this right: you had this major, somewhat broken, magical rock, in your possession because you ran off with it.”

Anya nodded cheerfully. “The Indiana Jones approach: grab the rock and run, carefully avoiding pygmies with blow-pipes, snakes, rivals, and back-stabbing assistants. A time-honored method.”

“And you parked it for safe-keeping with your ex, who may have walked off with it himself, for all we know.”

“Nuh-uh. Doesn’t have the brains. Besides, it’s a very ugly rock: it doesn’t look in the least valuable! Besides, I’ve taken vengeance on Olaf once already: he really, really wouldn’t like what I’d wish on him the second time around.”

“You’re Vengeance Demoning again?”

Anya shrugged. “I still have friends in the business. And would I ever be due a major vengeance for a betrayal like this! That stupid, Olaf isn’t. Mike will determine. Vamps are excellent trackers. And any vamp would know if the stone was anywhere near. It’s perfectly straightforward: I want my property back! Because it’s mine, and timely recovery and sensible, profitable disposition will avert a possible apocalypse. Buffy, you don’t seem to be taking this as seriously as you should: you seem distracted. Is something wrong?”

**********

It was a heluva big troll. Very dead. A couple of hours, maybe. And Spike’s smell plain from twenty feet away, which was about as close as Mike cared to get.

He’d been in jungles with people shooting at him and nothing like as spooked as he was now. Standing on a hill in the fucking daylight, and the daylight the wrong color, in some other fucking dimension (and what the hell did that mean?) and everything smelling strange and wrong, and if they said it was a troll Mike guessed they’d know, but he’d never in his life seen anything near so huge and ugly except a whore in Lagos and she hadn’t been anything like that size, and smack in the middle of it, Spike’s tag.

His trace, still hanging in the air, plain as anything. Followed it right downhill, once Mike had more or less got over feeling like he’d been yanked inside-out, one second standing in the Magic Box, uncomfortably holding hands with Anya and the Slayer, and the next on this wrong-shaped hill, gullies not running the way they should, trees all wrong and flabby looking, and locking right onto the two familiar things: the smell of blood and death, off a ways, and Spike.

He’d done this: Spike had. And how the hell was Mike supposed to play this?

First thing, he decided, was not to throw up. Anybody always looked like a fool, doing that. Next thing was to keep his mouth shut, which should also help with the not throwing up part.

It was like being seasick or like watching a 3-D movie without the special glasses.

He turned his back and walked off a little distance upwind, like he was hunting a track. No need of that whatever, but it was something to do, a reason not to be standing over the huge ugly foul stinking corpse with the two women, who were talking in upset voices but didn’t seem to mind the light or the thoroughly alien landscape that was freaking Mike so bad.

If he couldn’t get out of this light in the next five minutes, he was gonna come totally fucking unglued and do something. Didn’t know what. Something.

Expect a vamp to suddenly find himself in broad daylight and behave like it was nothing, like his demon wasn’t going absolutely apeshit, shaking so deep and constant it probably didn’t even show and what was that smell? And how could Spike have been in this place and keep it together enough to take down a thing like that, that troll, not just be hunting a hole to hide from the light?

Done it good, Spike had: took the throat right out. Blood everywhere roundabout. Women, they were stepping in it (don’t look!). So must not be good for feeding on, trolls. Might be good to know that, sometime. Spike’s blood, too, some. Mike stooped, touched, tasted. Not a lot, though. And the blood track went up, past those trees (?), back toward the wretched, crooked shack where they’d landed.

God, he had to get out of here before he made a total spectacle of himself!

Anya, she was talking to him and he hadn’t taken in a word. He waved uphill and started off, leading them along the trace, staying well ahead and the Slayer at his back: didn’t like that, not one bit. Could feel her there, some way, Death right behind him, sizzling on his nerves, something he’d thought about but never actually felt, and if he went for her, Spike would be months in showing him what a mistake that was. Unless, of course, the Slayer did him quick, which was a lot more likely.

And he just stopped. Couldn’t hack it.

Slayer, she circled him wide around, standing a good distance, watching him. “Mike…are you all right?”

Mike made some sort of noise that wasn’t a laugh. “Bad place here. Let me be.”

“Sunlight,” said the Slayer, and Mike glanced up and was surprised to see that she knew. “Your demon’s having problems with it.”

Not mocking him for going all unstrung, like he might have expected. Just saying it, understanding. Neutral.

Mike didn’t know what to make of that. Realized he was standing there truefaced, the demon damn near going into hysterics, and it wasn’t him. It was the demon. Demon was shaking him, not himself. He got that. Tried really hard to find the place inside that was just him, not the demon. Find a place to stand, accept the fact that this sun wasn’t hurting him, only the demon’s terror of it. Accept that the only way back was on: do what they’d brought him to do. Or some of it, anyway. Hold what he knew, which wasn’t much, steadily inside, not blurt it out just to be rid of the pressure of keeping shut about it.

Only the demon. Not him. Inside, he shouted something like Shut up, you maniac! You’re not helping here! I’ll get us out of this if you’ll just shut up!

And the demon backed off. Curled up and hid, some way. Trusted what he said and retreated.

That had never happened to Mike before.

Deliberately, because he could, he forced trueface back inside, where it belonged.

“Killer went back up to the shack. Not there anymore, though. Nobody close at all.”

Slayer, she didn’t move until he glanced and caught her eyes. Then she nodded, smelling and seeming all calm and steady. Businesslike.

Mike thought he’d never really noticed the Slayer of her before, like he felt it in this place.

He said, “Other day, when I pitched you off. I was totally out of line. Sorry.”

“All settled and done,” she replied over her shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.” Then she stopped, turned, to assure him gravely, “Apology accepted.”

They went on, the women, with the Slayer leading off, striding up the hill. Mike saw no reason to follow, instead going along his own track to the place they’d landed. Assuming the way in was also the way back, as good a place as any to wait for it to be done.

He looked around at how things appeared in the wrong sunlight. How the shadows fell. Took note of the strange smells, even though he couldn’t interpret them. Might be useful, sometime. Just himself, standing there, taking notice. Separate from the demon. It felt strange, but much better than the panic.

He took out the pocket watch. Not to check the time, just to hold it, see how it shone in the daylight. It steadied him, doing that.

Figured he now knew why Spike had missed the sweep, last night. Mike had seen to it, but it had bothered him because it wasn’t like Spike to not leave word when plans changed. Some other business to attend to, apparently. When it became Mike’s business, Spike would tell him. Still, he didn’t like not being told. Not knowing what he was supposed to be doing, how to play things.

He’d wait until Spike told him what to do about this business with the fucking troll. There should be a chance for that, at Dawn’s party tonight. Whatever else was going on, Spike wouldn’t miss that. Keep shut about it, in the meantime.

Presently the women came back toward him, talking between themselves. When they came close, Anya called, “Mike, do you know the Chaos Stone? That felt like a tiny Hellmouth?”

It was a dumb question: every vamp in Sunnydale who’d survived the Turok-han would know the call that thing put out, though hardly any would know it by sight or be able to put a name to it. However, Mike didn’t say so, just bobbed his head.

Anya continued, “Can you feel it here?”

“It’s not here. Can we go back now?”

“Are you sure?”

Mike didn’t want to piss her off, considering she was the only one who knew how to get back. “I’m real sure. It’s not anyplace around here. Is that what you’re looking for?”

“Yes,” she admitted, as though it cost her something. “Olaf, my ex, was keeping it for me.” The downhill tilt of her head said she meant the troll.

Her ex. Unless she was a shape-changer, like the demon whore in Lagos, the lady had fucking strange taste in fucking. Didn't seem all that cut up, though, to find him that way. Mainly annoyed, seemed like. Mike was gonna have to reconsider.

“If I notice it, I’ll tell you about it,” he offered, and that seemed to be finally enough: she held out both hands, one to him and one to the Slayer.

Mike had never expected he’d be so glad to hold hands with the Slayer.

**********

Willow decided that everybody other than herself was totally crazed.

There were vamps in the basement, digging. Waving small jars, Xander wanted to talk about the magical refractive index of latex paint, as compared to oil-based. Noticing that Buffy looked tense and depressed, Willow gladly turned from Xander’s bizarre questions and suggested they go mall-hopping tomorrow afternoon after they finished class and work, respectively. She was astonished when Buffy’s face crumpled and Buffy burst into tears and ran off upstairs. When Willow started to follow, Rona caught her by the front door, where the SITs, in overalls, T-shirts, and bandannas, were checking in deliveries, asking if she’d seen Spike.

Without waiting for Willow to respond, Rona explained, “He didn’t collect the tribute this morning, nor yesterday evening, neither. And he’s not answering his cell, no matter how long you wait. Huey thought maybe he made do with what’s flown in for the fledges, but Sue says not, it was all there. So--”

“Sue?” Willow interrupted blankly.

Rona stopped in mid-gesture: frowning, puzzled, slightly impatient. “You know: Sue! Suzanne. That got herself turned in Chicago, came--”

“Oh: that Sue,” Willow responded meekly. “How does Sue come into it?”

“Through the pipes. She’s in the basement.” Rona’s eyes widened. “Oh, you mean, like, come into it! Well, she’s a fledge, isn’t she, so she’d know if they’d been shorted. And I know we said we’d do for him, but not if he’s gonna pass up perfectly good tribute blood ‘cause he’s too frickin’ lazy to go collect it. Anyway, if you see him, tell him I brought it all and stuck it in the fridge, in the vegetable crisper, and if he don’t get it soon, it’s gonna go off on account of no preservatives?” With a brisk nod, Rona turned back to comparing the contents of a box against a checklist, leaving Willow with her jaw hanging and the impulse to wibble her lips with a forefinger, indicative of extreme bafflement.

Then Anya came out of the den to announce she’d stuck Willow’s laptop and reference materials in the cupboard, to clear the table, and wanting to know when the next batch of smell would be ready, since the current supply was almost exhausted and it wasn’t good business sense to create a demand and not be geared up to fulfill it.

Hands on blue-aproned hips, hair done up in a multicolored scarf, Anya waited expectantly for an answer.

Feeling not merely pinned down but skewered like a bug, Willow protested that nobody had even told her the supply was getting low and she’d expected to have a post-mortem on the effects before going to fullscale production.

“Why?” Anya asked brightly. “Has it died?” Then she, too, went into the pained lip-tremble, the welling and wounded eyes, and sobbed, “He wasn’t much, or actually he was quite a bit too much, but he was my moron, and I’ll miss him!” Then she flung herself into Willow’s uncertain embrace and wept heartily on her shoulder while Willow tentatively patted her back and made there, there noises, staring past Anya at the SITs, but they either ignored her mute appeal or shrugged to indicate they didn’t know what’d gotten into Anya either.

After a couple of minutes, Anya sniffed loudly, blew her nose on a tissue from her apron pocket, and announced, “I’m such a weak, weepy sentimentalist, considering that the local equivalent of wolves and badgers are probably gobbling up his entrails right now. Trolls aren’t much for funerals, it only encourages neighbors being eaten by the immediate family. So I honor their customs.” She dabbed at her eyes. “You still haven’t given me a delivery date for the smell.”

“A week?” Willow suggested feebly.

“Well, if that’s the best you can do.”

“I think Buffy said something about having part of the last carton in the SUV.”

Anya clapped her hands. “Oh, that’s splendid! Broken down and repackaged, that should last at least that long. I had the foresight to lay in ten gross of the more attractive, smaller bottles, so there’s just the decanting and labeling to be done. And don’t worry: a 40% share goes to Spike Enterprises, Inc., just as I told Buffy. All properly accounted for, every drop. I’m certainly aware of the need for fluid assets, now that Buffy’s been fired. Where are the van keys?”

“In the saucer. On the weapons chest,” Willow said, pointing like a statue of Fate. Fired?

“Thanks!” With a friendly arm pat, Anya went off to rescue the carton from languishing uselessly in the vehicle.

Fired?

Going upstairs and tapping cautiously at Buffy’s door, Willow found her curled up on the bed and sobbing into Mr. Gordo’s well-worn plush. Sitting on the foot of the bed, Willow put on crinkle-eyebrow concern face and got the whole account of Buffy’s magnificently awful day. So far, she thought darkly, since the party was yet to come.

“Don’t worry,” she assured Buffy earnestly. “Spike’s been paying me as a consultant--you know: Spells and Smells?” (That got her a watery smile and a sniffy chuckle.) “And he’s been keeping right up with it, too: all Mr. Efficiency, if you can believe that. And I was thinking about a new computer, mine’s already two years old and that’s a little clunky for a high-speed pipe, but really, really, that can wait!” Willow waved her hands emphatically. “And I have my scholarship, and that covers living expenses just about, if you happen to be a rat or something.” And what HAD become of Amy, she wondered, the house all vacant and standing open, then shook herself back to the topic. “It’s not as if Spike won’t be chipping in, either. Or too, depending on how you look at it. And Anya’s on our side, making money hand over fist on the smell we paid to produce and giving us a whopping 40% of the take. So how could we possibly lose out, here? There’s plenty of time, months, before we have to start tightening the old belt. I’m way no on the belt tightening!” She patted Buffy’s shoulder. “It’s not as if it was a real job or anything, Buffy.”

Buffy teared up a little again. “But it was mine, and I liked it. Felt like I was really helping, at least sometimes. Used the spell-checker on all my reports, when there was time, hardly ever late, even skipped lunch sometimes, sat through nearly every one of those stupid all-faculty-and-staff meetings--”

“There, there. I know you did. A model of punctuality and attendance, and who could ask for more? You already have a calling, Buffy, and that’s way better than some stupid part-time charity job!”

“The pay sucks rocks big time.”

“Well, that’s the thing about a calling: you don’t get to dicker. Picketing is also heavily discouraged.”

“You bet it is! Thanks, Will.” Pushing hair out of her face, Buffy made another watery smile. “Maybe I’m getting past the panic-stricken, going to the poorhouse now phase. But it was just so awful, feeling like a total loser in the wonderful world of Real Life, and I couldn’t get ahold of anybody, and then Anya shrieking in my ear about the wretched Chaos Stone…. I hate to admit it, but it was almost a relief.”

“Yay, distractions,” commented Willow absently, biting her bottom lip. “I don’t like it, about the stone being gone. True, I don’t like the stone, it made me all itchy until Spike tuned it, but if somebody could hook it into the dimensional instability that’s all that’s left the Hellmouth….” She looked up, and her eyes and Buffy’s traded unspoken information and agreement.

“Could be bad, yeah. Would Amy have the--?”

“Not on her best day. Anyway, she’s gone. No, no idea where. But it’s not like Amy’s the only witch in the world, or even in Sunnydale. Only the cheapest, who’ll take commissions from vamps…. Present company excluded, of course. Buffy, we’ve been spread too thin. We’re all keeping track of our little piece, not comparing notes nearly often enough. There’s just too much going on. We have to start having regular meetings again, like we used to. Before Giles….” Willow stopped delicately, to see if that was gonna set off the waterworks again.

“I know. I should be calling them, but I’ve been all caught up in this back-and-forth push-pull business with Spike. Not arguing about control, not really…just trying to make things fit, somehow. He’s trying as hard as I am to find ways to keep helping without letting everything he’s responsible for go smash, doing it.”

“But it drains the energy,” Willow commented sympathetically, and Buffy nodded heavily several times.

“Oh, yes: major energy suckage, big time. It’s just so frickin’ hard to connect.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Willow said with lifted lip corners. “Somebody missed curfew by quite a bit, last Tuesday. I sort of thought some kind of connecting thing was going on. Like the No-Tell Motel?”

“Exercise mats under the bleachers,” Buffy replied wrily. “The epitome of wild romance. Well, some kind of epitome, anyway.” She smiled, eyes downcast. “But he does try.”

“I’ve always said that,” Willow affirmed. “That Spike, he’s a tryer. Haven’t you always heard me say that?”

Buffy shrugged gracefully. “I guess. Even if he didn’t turn up for patrol last night. No big. So I’m totally with the mission here, all right? M for mission, M for meetings. After the party?”

Willow blew out a breath, blinking. “Yeah. All right. I’ll spread the word. Even Spike, if I can find him. It seems as if he’s Mr. Unavailable: even Xander asked if I’d seen him.”

“Oh, he’d never miss Dawn’s party. Even if Dawn’s not here to enjoy it. He’s probably curled up in an abandoned refrigerator someplace, having a nice nap. Do normal people have lives like this? Stop, don’t answer that!”

“Then you’d have to kill me?”

“Then a skipping return to the great pink hereafter wouldn’t look quite so attractive.”

It was Buffy’s first reference in a long time to Willow’s dragging her out of heaven. Buffy said it lightly and waited to smile until Willow risked looking at her, making her know that was over enough to finally have become joke-worthy.

“Was it pink?” Willow asked cautiously.

“I honestly forget. Probably.” Rolling off the bed, Buffy began poking through her closet. Turning only her head, she commented, “If we have a meeting, I may finally find out what Xander’s been doing in the basement. I’m not sure if I’ll survive the revelation. I’ll just change costume for Action Barbie and I’ll be right with you guys.”

“Ah, Buffy? A suggestion? Before you change, shower. A definite aroma of demon goo….”

“Yeah--tramping around dimensions where the grass is brown and the dirt is green in my office clothes: whatever could I have been thinking? Ruined my shoes, too. Not demon, though: troll.”

Willow nodded. “Anya said. Sic transit baby-devouring Olaf.”

“Rest in pieces.” Buffy reached for a robe. “The memory lingers on, huh?”

Willow held her nose. “I’ve become a minor expert in the field. Trust me: you don’t want anybody but your best friend noticing.”

“Then I’m lucky my best friend noticed,” Buffy said so warmly that Willow had a happy little shiver. “Luckily, my only company was Anya. So no danger there.”

Leaving Buffy to it, Willow glanced at Dawn’s shut door, decided against knocking, and clopped down the stairs to the busy hallway.

She’d make cookies, she decided. Not that there seemed any lack of food, but she felt her cookie-making had become traditional for affairs of this sort. Good cookies, like good magic, were the product of art and had to be done by hand.

Thinking over the circumstances of Buffy’s dismissal, Willow thought, The smell’s too hot. Huh. Imagine that. And Spike hadn’t said word one to her about it. Maybe he liked it that way: Mr. Cheekbones-Slinkyhips should be a good judge of degrees of hotitude. She should check with him before changing the formula. Get it too tame and nobody would wear it and worse, it wouldn’t sell. It was a truism: hotitude sold.

Since Spike's translation was what provided the fuel that ran this whole maybe-too-diversified operation, it seemed to Willow that he should have the deciding vote about the formula. It was a truism: hotitude sold.

How did anybody expect her to coordinate production if nobody bothered to tell her anything?

**********

Mike woke when Sue touched his arm. She said, “We’re through.”

She looked nearly as droopy eyed and dim as he felt, and likely was worse, since he’d had his sleep out, even if in bits and patches. But she’d been hellbent to be part of this detail, nagged Spike something fierce until he gave in, on the grounds that from her time with Digger, she knew shoring. Knew how to slot the ties so the ends met neat, hold the crosspiece overhead, against the ceiling, while the two struts got braced underneath. Then a couple of long nails at the joints for reinforcement, against shift. If the shaft was cut true and checked for plumb and level every couple of feet, wasn’t really anyplace for the ties to shift to. But heavy rains were at least possible, if unlikely; the soil was sandy; and the deforested hills roundabout might produce a mudslide like other California communities had suffered, now and again.

Spike wanted this tunnel solid when everything aboveground was flat. Like an A-bomb hit, for instance. Didn’t matter that was even less likely than the mudslide--that was what he wanted, and Mike’s job was to see that he got it.

Any idiot could dig, was Sue’s contention, but shoring, that was skilled labor.

With an actual carpenter heading things up and Mike as site boss, wasn’t a whole lot of need for a fledge with a couple weeks’ experience in trimming ties. As a fledge on probation, Mike had shored up the equivalent of maybe a dozen city blocks before Digger judged him fit for the open air and free hunting, but that was all right. It was enough if Mike checked the girl’s work a couple times a shift, made what few adjustments were needed, checked the overall progress, and catnapped the rest of the time. If she wants it, leave her to it, Spike had said, and that was good enough for Mike.

Giving her a chance to prove herself: all anybody could ask, was Mike’s opinion. And Spike was real good about that.

Mike rolled to sitting, then jumped up and paced the completed shaft, inspecting it. It sloped down, of course: wouldn’t want muddy rainwater backing up into the Slayer’s basement. The four vamps of the digging crew stood aside to let him edge past, Sue trotting at his heels and breathing anxiously whenever he stopped to give the shoring a good shove. Had to pass under a sewer line, then angle back up to reach the big concrete storm drain beyond. The opening was cut high: Mike had to duck and bend double to get head and shoulders through to check. Some loose dirt fell into his hair and down the neck of his shirt. Seemed good enough: the drain ran off to both sides at a slight angle, and there was a junction a few yards off: made for added stability and less chance of being trapped in the shaft by waiting opposition. Crash through that and you were home free. From the junction, you could get damn near anyplace in Sunnydale regardless of the sun.

Backing out, Mike nodded his satisfaction. He told the nearest digger, “Clear off now: people here are having a party and don’t want muddy monsters underfoot. Spike’s laid out for liquor. If you’re not back to the factory in half an hour to drink it, it goes to the sweep crew.” That last was a lie, because the booze was drugged. Keep them all peacefully passed out till Spike could confirm that he wanted them dusted, to keep knowledge of the tunnel as close as possible. Mike responded to their fangy grins amiably and pushed back against the tunnel wall so they could dash past. More dirt down his collar.

He turned and found Sue still there. “I’m staying for the party,” she announced. “’Manda said I could. I have clothes to change into. Fed up, and everything.”

“’Manda doesn’t have the say over where you go or what you do,” Mike pointed out sternly. “You been crawling around in the dirt for hours. Fed or not, you can’t shed trueface ten minutes at a time and how’s the Slayer gonna explain you--say you have a disease?”

“You’re as dirty as me,” Sue responded boldly, “and I don’t stink. And you’re going!”

“What I do is no concern of yours. Spike said the fledges go back, so you go back. Have your blowout. You did a good job here and I’ll tell Spike so.”

Finally he saw her, still whining and complaining, off down the pipe. When she turned at the junction, he listened awhile longer, then turned the other way. Sun was down, and the drain ran close by Casa Mike, where he’d left the bike, clean clothes, and a few other things. Though he no longer laired there, it was nearby and handy sometimes.

An hour later, showered and changed and (by his own estimate) no offense to nose or eye, he presented himself on the front porch of Casa Summers and rang the bell. The Lady Gates opened the door like a servant too full of herself to actually let anybody in.

Sticking his hands in the pockets of his bomber jacket, Mike said, “They got you doing this, huh?” with a certain sympathy.

“It fortifies the pretense that it’s my party. Are you coming in, or do you need to be invited?”

“No, got that all taken care of, thanks.” He slid past the threshold. Bending to her ear, he said softly, “Let her come out. Let her have her time. What are you scared of, that you can’t spare her a couple of hours?”

She turned away so fast her hair whipped his face. Mike didn’t mind. The hair streaked his skin with Dawnsmell, which was just fine, except no Dawn to go with it.

“I have things to attend to. Amuse yourself,” she directed without turning, lifting a hand, fingers artistically spread. Now Dawn, she’d have made a naughty gesture but Lady Gates was all into draping herself morosely against walls and looking bored out of her mind.

Well, nobody could accuse her of doing anything frivolous, like having a good time. Easing through into the front room, he found it plain enough where the presents went: a little stack of brightly wrapped boxes on the floor by the television. Mike snuck the box out of his pocket and set it safe in back: didn’t want something to land on it. Then he moved it to the side, but that was no good because the tiny card would get bent. So he put it in the back again. When everything else was moved away, it’d be seen well enough, he figured.

Xander and Anya were on the couch, opposite ends, Xander radiating nervousness, maybe because Anya was going on about the troll, about what he’d been like to fuck, and that would likely make anybody nervous. All the same, Harris had something about him that suggested he’d like to get lucky, do a couple of turns with her, and had some hopes in that direction. No accounting for all the effort humans put into a simple thing like fucking. Not like anybody really gave a damn. It would be like getting all wound up over sneezing, or some other automatic reaction.

He vaguely recalled he’d once felt different about it, but that was before and didn’t signify.

Squatting by the couch end Harris was hanging onto like it might buck him off any minute, Mike reported quietly, “Tunnel’s all done but the doors. I set the screen across, on the inside. You were gonna see to the doors, I recall.”

“Yeah, fine, good.” Looking him up and down, Harris remarked, “You’re all cleaned up. Hair wetted down and combed, and everything.”

It was a question, though it didn’t sound that way. “Slayer said I should come.”

“Sure, fine. Well, Buffy’s collecting coats out in the hall, and there’s a discreet bar set up by the refrigerator to make the evening slightly less bizarre for us grownups. You are a grownup, right?”

As they stood up together, Mike replied, “I’m six.”

“Six? Is that like dog years?”

“No. Vamp years,” Mike said, happily deadpan, and watched Harris do a gulp and a take.

“Michael! I didn’t see you there!” exclaimed Anya, holding out both arms like she expected he was gonna bend down and hug her. She didn’t look at all put out, though, that he didn’t. “I can’t imagine how I could miss anyone of such imposing stature!”

Fact was, he and Harris were about eye-to-eye, though Harris was toting around considerable lard. Mike saw no point in saying so, just nodded.

“Xander, take his jacket. What is it, about…certain people and leather? Michael, give Xander your jacket so I can see you!”

Uncomfortably aware of Lady Gates’ sardonic eye on him, Mike complied. After being invited, he’d chosen out a brand new, never-worn T-shirt: light blue, with the sentiment in white across the front, DO tell me about your gall bladder surgery! and across the back, and I’ll show photos of my grand-niece toasting kittens! He didn’t know why, it’d just tickled him. Anya, she just blinked, but maybe she wasn’t reading the sentiment. Lady Gates, though, came and leaned to read the front, then slapped both hands across her mouth and ran off, fizzing. So somebody had appreciated it, anyway, he guessed.

Anya said more nice things about him, calling him “Michael” a few more times, which he didn’t particularly like, and then started asking about his progress in locating Ethan Rayne: whispering and glancing fast left and right, as though she worried that the empty room would overhear. A vamp in the basement could have followed every word, but Mike still thought it odd.

“Know some places he’s been,” Mike admitted, which he figured wasn’t saying all that much, then was spared having to say anything else by Harris leaning in at the arch, wanting to know his preference in drinkables. That gave Mike an excuse to follow along to the kitchen, where Red was mixing something pink in a shaker. Smelled like fruit, mango, peach, orange, and rum so dark it was nearly black. Pointing at the shaker, Mike asked, “That just for you?”

She quirked her mouth and tilted her head, surprised. “No, it’s not exclusive, you can have some if you like. I was just gonna mix in some crushed ice, but….”

“Fine just like that.”

“All righty, then!” she said cheerily. As Harris exited, Red poured from the shaker into a champagne flute through a strainer. Gently, Mike separated her from flute and strainer and laid the latter aside, because she’d been straining out all the good part. Then he hovered his hand, offering to manage what was obviously, to her, a heavy and unwieldy object. She shrugged off his offer sharply, though he hadn’t meant to offend, then did a quick Anya-style left-and-right check and floated the shaker. Took her some frowning concentration to make it pour straight, not lose the cap and slop all over, but Mike held the flute steady and the transfer was accomplished.

When he took a small drink and then finished it all, she let the shaker come to rest on the top of the island and smiled. Letting go the rigidity, she started cutting up more fruit cheerfully enough. Glancing up, she commented not-quite-apologetically, “I don’t like being loomed at.”

As pleasantly, Mike commented, “It’s a wonder anybody does magic at all, considering how it stinks them up.”

Her face went pink. Then she said, “Hazard of the trade. Is it good?”

Mike collected a second flute from those stacked on a tray near the sink and took up the shaker one-handed. “Want it strained?”

She shook her head, fluffing auburn hair around her face. Pretty, Mike thought, and powerful after her own fashion, and determined not to be impressed by big moon-faced louts with stupid expressions. Lifting her chin, she declared, “If you can take it raw, so can I.”

Another sentiment Mike might like to see on a shirt. Steadying the cap with a thumb, he poured the flute half full in case she wanted ice, after all. She took a gulp, then made quite a business of swallowing. “Chewy,” she remarked, when she could talk.

“Yeah. Good like that,” Mike agreed.

“Something about an all liquid diet,” she reflected. “Spike likes Weetabix in his blood. Like Wheat Chex, only British,” she explained, catching right on that he didn’t understand. She licked her lips pensively. “Think I’ve got enough rum in there?”

“Let you know. Might take a bit more sugar, though.”

“More? That rum is practically alkified molasses already!”

“The way it’s made in the Barbados, there’s more sugar. Sometimes lemons, too. There’s no one set way.”

“I’ve been to Bath,” she announced. “Also the Cotswolds. And Devon.”

“Never been to Devon,” Mike admitted, amused by her immediate, defensive world-hopping one-upmanship. “Then again, I’m only six,” he added, to see if he could pull the same reaction from her as he had from Harris. But she just twitched an absent smile, herding the cut fruit pieces together with the blade of the big knife. Then she lost patience and scooped the fruit up between two palms and dumped it in the shaker, that apparently doubled as the top part of a blender. “Hands don’t count, do they?” she asked, pouring in the rum in a slow, glugging stream.

“Never minded in the Barbados.”

She set the cap and turned on the blender, which made a hellacious racket, blessedly brief. Snapping the switch, she gave him a sideways look. “Are you flirting? Because if you are--”

“Just trying to get through the time, not piss nobody off. Spike said be here, so I am. Anya, she flirts.”

She made a hiccupy, surprised laugh. “And then treats everybody to the post-game recap, blow by blow by blow. That sounds dirty, doesn’t it,” she reflected, licking her fingers. “I didn’t mean it that way, except of course that it is dirty, and I’m supposed to be bringing this to the den where everybody is now having cake and other munchables, and pretending that it’s punch, just like what the officially underaged are getting, so why don’t you come along and save me from further embarrassment? You could bring that tray of flutes…?”

The den was the main party room, with a Happy Birthday paper cover over the big table and assorted balloons he ducked warily, getting back near the big sideboard, out of the way. Besides Lady Gates, two other girls about the same age were sitting there chatting up a storm between them, not seeming to notice the Lady was pushing a small piece of yellow cake around her plate and then mashing with the tines of her fork, looking as if, on the whole, she’d rather be in Philadelphia.

Mike declined cake but accepted another flute of the pink punch, the kind from the shaker, not the kind from the bowl on the table, with the ladle in it. About 90 proof, was his guess, and the rum about half of it. Already had something of a buzz from it. So he’d stop with this one. Never had had Spike’s head for liquor. Or his taste for it, neither. Never knew anybody to get themselves fighting mad, and maybe dusted, after a couple of joints. But that seemed to be part of what Spike liked about it.

And Spike still wasn’t here. Mike had been watching for him every minute since he’d come through the door, but not a trace of him. And the table was being cleared now, the punchbowl and the remains of the cake moved off to the sideboard in preparation for the laying out of presents.

Harris carried them in on a tray, the whole pile wobbling precariously, so that Mike was real nervous until they were safely set down. Didn’t see his own tiny box, but that was all right: he’d go get it if it’d been missed, if Harris hadn’t stepped on it. Thought, because the presents were there, the unwrapping would be done in the front room but that had just been storage, while the food was laid out.

Lady Gates made a methodical business of opening the presents. Read each card aloud: “To Dawn. From Anya.” Then opened it: an envelope with a stock certificate. Then it was a pair of earrings from Harris. A leather-bound blank notebook from one of the girls, Luanne. A scarf from the other, Janice. With each, the Lady would look the giver straight in the eyes and say exactly the same thing: “It’s very nice. Thank you.” Then she’d give one melancholy twitch of a smile. It was like watching something animatronic. The girls didn’t seem to notice or care although the Janice girl smelled a bit uncomfortable. The adults, though, were starting to look around, like they’d much sooner be in Philadelphia, too.

The last present was Buffy’s: a watch. It got the same dead-eyed reception as the rest.

Then the Lady sat straight in her chair, fists on the table, and announced, “There’s nothing from Spike. Why is there nothing from Spike?”

As the Slayer was explaining with tight restraint that she didn’t know, Mike leaned and set aside the notebook, which he’d been itching to do since watching it get set on top of his present.

“Oh,” said the Lady, picking off the card. “To Dawn. From Mike.” She gave him a speculative glance, pulling off the squashed bow and then the ribbon. She opened the box and lifted the fold of tissue. And her face changed. And she screeched, holding the little box in the basket of her hands, head thrown back, pulse rate exploding.

Mike had sort of hoped she’d like it. He’d first gotten chocolates, a nothing sort of gift, had it wrapped and everything. Then he’d changed his mind. Gone back to the case he’d smelled her hand-print on, one time he’d been shadowing her and Spike through the mall, after she’d first taken against him. One look and he’d known what she’d leaned down, hand on the free-standing display, to examine and then leave behind.

A blown glass redgold winged dragon with flutters and streamers of whiskers, mane: could hardly look at it without destroying some tiny thread. Couldn’t find one with dragonfly wings, like a real Taskin, like the one she’d brought down on a rocky hillside and him too far away and barred by the sunlight from doing a single thing about it, far out of the carbine’s effective range, her running and fighting every second just the same, her and unseen Spike someplace behind or under the beautiful, deadly creature they’d some way contrived to kill between them. Didn’t seem to make any like that, out of glass. But this was the one she’d stopped by and bent to look at, her hand-print smelling all sad, so he’d hoped she’d know what he meant by it and at least like it for the praise of her it was, even though it was only his present and not very lifelike neither on account of the wings being wrong.

Dawn Dragonslayer.

“Get out!” she screeched. “Get out, get out, get out! You’re no help at all, you just watch and fiddle and do nothing! And I’m sick of it! Sick to bloody death of it, and you can just do me now or else get the hell out! I’ll trash your files, I’ll trash your whole fucking system so bad you’ll never get it sorted! You LEAVE ME ALONE!”

Mike had slid into the hallway, believing it was him she was screaming at. Not wanting to be there or anyplace around. Didn’t care about the jacket, didn’t need it, not gonna paw through the closet looking for it, just fuck it and get gone. He was about halfway down the basement stairs when it came to him that it was Dawn, truly Dawn, reading the riot act to Lady Gates, and turned back.

She was now screeching, “Where’s Spike? He wouldn’t not be here, not for anything. Where is he?”

Behind him, someplace down in the dark basement, something breathed, and moved, and a skittery little chuckle. Mike went down, one balanced, controlled step at a time, letting trueface flow outward for the acuity.

Humming, so soft even he could barely hear it: gave him a location--the opposite wall, moving from right to left. Not yet in view: he was still too high on the stairs.

Then he caught the trace and relaxed, settling midway down the stairs with a thump. “Spike, what the goddam hell you been doing? Just take off, leave everybody hanging, covering for you.”

More humming, and a rasping noise: a hand scraping cement block. “No shackles,” Spike responded in a sing-song voice, like he was making some joke Mike didn’t get. “No more shackles. All free. But I didn’t go up yet. S’posed to, but I didn’t. Figured it out, Michael: s’not the blood. It’s the hunting that’s the main thing. Never work without. But I’m s’posed to go up now. Give Bit her present.”

“What the hell are you on?” Mike demanded, furious at the doubletalk nonsense, and dropped down the remaining stairs with enough of a push, he was facing Spike no more than two feet off.

Stripped to the waist, ghostly pale in the darkness, Spike was working his way along the far wall, passing his right hand across the cinderblock as though in search of something. No smell of liquor whatever. Nor any smell of the other place, neither, with the wrong sunlight. None of the troll. But he stank of magic. And there was strong bloodsmell, strong as the shock of mothballs: from what Spike held in his left hand. Dangling a twisted ribbon from the middle finger, a human hand.

Gift-wrapped, Mike thought, with a sense like being punched in the gut.

“Spike. You just settle, all right? We’ll get this sorted out. Dawn’s back: she wants to see you. So you settle, and I’ll get the Slayer--”

“Yeah. Right. So, Michael: do you think she’ll like her prezzie?”

Spike turned half around, and he was grinning. His eyes were completely empty. And Mike went for him, knowing he didn’t dare go back upstairs and leave this behind him. Made contact for a second but Spike’s torso and arms were greased, oiled, something, and Mike couldn’t keep hold. And the skin-to-skin contact burned, sudden and fierce. He yelled for the Slayer, loud as he could. Before he’d got more than the first syllable out he got kneed in the chin and knocked crooked, down on his side on the cement. Rebounding the next instant, he lunged to block the stairs and got cracked behind the ear with what felt like a piece of pipe. Held onto the railing, finding his balance again, hearing that weird skittery little chuckle some ways off now.

Spike was gone. Off down the tunnel. And by the smell, left his fuck-ugly little present behind.

Chapter 12: A Hole in the Air

Leaning wearily on the edge of the half-open door, Buffy said, “And the fun just keeps on coming.”

Clustered on the front porch--the two guys in front and the rest huddled anxiously behind--about a dozen kids from the safety class looked back at her with expressions variously hopeful, indignant, worried, and glum.

The lead guy said, “When we went to the gym, there was a sign that the class was canceled. And then Mona said she’d seen you clearing out your office this morning. So…I guess there was a problem about the dance?”

“Seems so, Andy.”

The guy pointed to his companion. “He’s Andy. I’m George.” He looked embarrassed for her mistake.

Buffy shut her eyes. In the den, Dawn and Lady Gates were arguing over who should have present tenancy of the body. In the front room, Mike was refusing to sit down to recover from a probable concussion and Willow and Anya were trying to keep him from bolting before he’d said what had happened in the basement. Xander was off conveying Janice and Luanne to their respective homes, charged with coming up with some explanation of Dawn’s screaming fit that wouldn’t stir up still more trouble. And still no sign of Spike, which had begun to worry her.

Just when it seemed there was no way things could be more bizarre and nerve-wracking, the doorbell rang and Buffy found herself confronting a deputation from the course.

Before Buffy had thought of anything to say, Anya and Willow came backing out ahead of a thunderously scowling Mike: a rather scary prospect with blood in his hair and soaked into his shirt’s neckband. Buffy wheeled, blocking the door with her body, and Mike hauled up short, then pivoted (Willow dodged out of his way) and started off down the hall.

“Mike,” Buffy called, finding within herself a flat voice of command, knowing force would be a real bad thing to try here. “Stay put five minutes, until I understand what’s going on. All right?”

Mike didn’t answer, but he halted.

Meanwhile Anya had been listening to the deputation’s grievances and concerns with exclamations of “No!” and “I had no idea! That’s terrible!” Turning to Buffy, she said, “They canceled your class?”

Buffy shrugged. “Sort of goes with the whole being-fired dealie.”

“Well, all of you come by the Magic Box tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll have a notice posted of the new schedule. And anyone who’s short of the new experimental scent, I have it on sale for only ten dollars a bottle, so you can stock up.” Anya smiled at them brilliantly.

George (or Andy, whichever it was) said, “So you’re going on with it, Ms. Summers?” seeking Buffy’s confirmation.

“Of course she is!” Anya declared. “Other arrangements will have to be made, that’s all. And there may be a small fee involved, since it’s no longer a school-sponsored activity. Overhead, you understand. But you all appear suitably affluent, so I’m sure it will be no hardship.”

One of the girls in the back--Buffy thought it was Candy--chirped, “And Spike: he’s still part of it, right?”

“Of course! Spike’s always involved. That’s a given where Buffy is concerned. Now don’t forget, come by the Magic Box tomorrow and the new schedule will be posted. Goodbye!” Shoving the door shut with her back, Anya lost the smile. “Buffy, I don’t understand you at all. You should have told me immediately! You’ve developed this fine commercial possibility and there’s just no follow-through. I don’t understand at all. You’ve left me barely any time to negotiate a different venue. I’ll have to call Albert at home, very unprofessional, but I trust he’ll understand.” Going into the front room, she sat sideways on the weapons chest, dialing the fixed phone that lived there.

Willow asked softly, “What was all that about?”

“I have no idea.” Taking a steadying breath, Buffy got everybody into the front room and more or less seated, except Mike, who leaned against the wall, sullenly inspecting his boots.

Standing in the door arch, arms folded, Buffy said to him, “What you ran into, in the basement--Spike, right?”

Mike shook his head. “Didn’t say that. Not saying nothing.”

Looking around, Anya interrupted her call to direct Buffy, “Tell everybody about the Chaos Stone being stolen.”

“To put this all in context,” what was plainly Lady Gates began, back in control, just as Xander blew in the front door, a grocery bag in his arms, voicing the desperate plaint, “Beer?”

So everything stopped and there was yet another sorting--mainly beer distributed and snacks set out--before the conference resumed. Ducking Anya’s solicitous approach with a wet towel, Mike got himself cleaned up and smoked a funny smelling cigarette on the porch. He seemed calmer when he came back, consenting to sit on the floor by the TV and turning a cold beer can around and around in his hands without opening it.

Perched prissily on the couch like a posed mannequin, undeterred by the interruption, Lady Gates began again, “To put this all in context and starting from the top, a Chaos Mage called Ethan Rayne is gathering materials and forces needed for an attempt to reopen the Hellmouth. Whichever of them initiated the contact, it’s plain that he’s currently in collaboration with a vampire called Digger and a witch named Amy Madison, as well as calling other mages, wizards, and the like, of various disciplines, to him. Since the mass virgin sacrifice was aborted by you and Spike,” (the Lady nodded at Buffy,) “Rayne has instead secured for a power source a magical artifact, a dimensional key known as the Chaos Stone. However, this artifact alone, untuned, is not sufficient for the task. As it currently is, it scatters any power directed into it and might well scorch severely…or kill…any mage, however skilled, who tried to manipulate it. He--”

“This is all your fault,” Anya told Willow, glowering. “I told you about the stone in the strictest confidence, and you blabbed!”

“I never!”

“Anya,” said the Lady, and Anya shut up instantly, looking nervous. “Your injudicious prattle has been more extensive than you evidently remember. Though my contact has been interrupted, Spike knew the stone’s location--you’d told him in the course of a phone call. That’s how Rayne learned about it: he now has access to whatever Spike knows. As a means of securing and controlling the stone, and in furtherance of Digger’s aims, Rayne has bespelled Spike and compelled him to become his instrument and agent. And I don’t like it. I won’t tolerate it. We’ve claimed Spike for our instrument and will not have that subverted. However, in any direct contest for control between us and Rayne, Spike would be…broken. That outcome is intolerable to the part of us that is Dawn. Her perspective and sensibilities are now part of our view and must be taken into account, in terms of what action we determine to take.”

“See?” Willow declared to Anya, who seemed to take no notice, gazing at Mike with hard, suspicious eyes.

“Michael, who killed Olaf? You didn’t say, so I assumed you didn’t know. You let us assume that.”

Everybody then looked at Mike, who very largely and loudly said nothing.

Buffy called back into her mind the image of Olaf’s huge, unsightly corpse. She could remember no evidence of a weapon. Olaf had been “done” by hand. Quietly, she said, “Mike, you have to tell us. We have to know what’s happened to know what to do.”

“Don’t got to tell you nothing!” Mike burst out. “Don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing here, with you people. Don’t know how you’re apt to act. I got my own line to follow. I’ll listen here a little, if that’s what you want, because Spike sets value on you and I figure he’d want me to not cross you, go along with what you want some ways. But-- No.” He shook his head, setting the beer can away from him, to avoid bursting it with his hands. “No.”

Looking around, Xander said, “Spike’s gone? Then who’s gonna approve the invoices?”

“What invoices?” Buffy asked.

“Never mind,” Xander said, retreating by stuffing his mouth with cheese puffs.

Rising from the couch in her party finery, Lady Gates was suddenly natural with it, inhabiting it in a way she hadn’t before. Settling onto the floor by Mike, she brushed her hair back from her face in an automatic gesture, and Buffy realized it was Dawn. “Mike, do you trust me?”

A silence while Mike considered her. “I guess,” he responded finally.

“We have to find Spike. We have to get him out of this. I can’t promise that nothing bad will happen. But it won’t be your fault unless you try to take it on, all on your own. It will take all of us. Half the problem is that we all know a little but nobody knows it all. We’re all split up, divided. In Spike’s place, I’m telling you: tell us what you know and what you think. We need you for this.”

Another long, considering silence. “All right.” After a moment, Mike added, “Does this mean you’re talking to me again?”

“Guess so,” Dawn admitted, looking aside and twisting a pinch of her skirt.

Mike nodded, then looked up at Buffy, calm and open-faced. “What do you want to know?”

Somebody leaned on the doorbell.

As the one nearest, Buffy said resignedly, “I’ll get that,” and yanked open the door. She stared: it was Giles--disheveled in an unbuttoned overcoat, unshaven, red-eyed, jet-lagged, hair standing up in crooked tufts as though he’d been plowing his fingers through it. “Giles,” she said blankly. “What are you doing here? Of course I’m glad to see you, but--”

“Yes, quite,” Giles said curtly. “May I come in?”

For a second, Buffy had the unnerving thought Giles had been turned. She seized his hand: warm. And of course: he was just Giles. A pull on his hand drew him inside. She let go to shut the door.

Catching sight of Giles, Willow and Anya ran out to greet him, Willow offering to take his coat, Anya commenting gaily on how terrible he looked. Behind, in the arch, Xander silently proffered a beer.

Giles ignored their greetings and attentions. “Never mind that,” he said, grim and direct. “Where’s Spike?”

**********

Mike knew who Giles was but hadn’t had much contact with him. So it was pure discovery and satisfaction to watch the man take charge, and all the rest fall into place: everybody knowing where they stood in relation to the others and what they were supposed to be doing. It was as though the Scoobies (as Spike sometimes called them) suddenly came into focus, became comprehensible. A missing center, returned, made sense of the rest.

Not that Mike was a part of it. His only connection was to Dawn. But that was enough.

She was being Lady Gates again at the moment, but that didn’t signify to Mike as much as it had. Dawn was close and knew all that went on; when she was the best one to deal with something, her immediacy and fire as compared to the Lady’s cool distance, then it was Dawn that was present. To him, she could be Dawn, and he suspected she didn’t know what it meant for him to say he trusted her. Or maybe she did. It would be nice if she did, knew what a huge exception he made for her, considering that he didn’t entirely trust Spike. Vamps weren’t particularly inclined to trust. Just not how it was.

But she was being the Lady now to deal with Giles as one ancient to another and not have her young girl aspect mixing in and confusing things between them. Ancients didn’t need to explain much to one another: the right phrase or two, and they just knew.

Just as Giles had clearly known, from that scrap of phoned conversation, that he had to come, and set down everything and got on a plane within a couple hours and came straight on until he was here. Go right at a thing, head on: Mike understood that.

The Lady had sketched in the present lay of things, and the affront to her authority that Spike’s being taken was, in only a few words.

Giles came back, sure and bitter, “Ethan is a fribble soul: he cares nothing for the Hellmouth. Returning to Sunnydale to reopen it, much less risking himself to do so, would never have occurred to him. He’s been put up to it. The potential for disruption is what would have appealed to him.”

The Lady looked around at Mike sharply, as though he’d said something, but he hadn’t. “Mike, please set your watch aside.”

Mike thought about that a minute, then slipped the watch from his pocket and laid it on the floor, still in easy reach.

“What’s this,” she said, “about a severed hand?”

“Something was down there,” Mike said, falling back into the comfortable habit of report--giving all the pertinent factors as concisely as possible. “Turned out, it was Spike, completely off his head. Said he was supposed to come up to give Dawn this ripped-off human hand, fresh, as a present. But he’d been putting it off. Fighting doing it. My going at him let him break it off, leave. He was pulled two ways about it,” Mike continued soberly. “Wanted to be here, yet didn’t. Wanted to see Dawn, give her something, but not that. Whatever was pushing at him--this Rayne, I guess--was going half the distance on what Spike wanted, himself. The rest, that was what Rayne wanted him to do.”

The Lady reflected, “So some capacity to resist still remains. Control is not complete.”

“It’s variable,” Giles commented bleakly, looking up as Buffy came in with a mug of strong tea on a tray for him. As she set it out, he continued, “Having a slave is no fun. Ethan only enjoys collecting pets: creatures capable of surprising and entertaining him. He enjoys their frustration and confusion. He…rewards them for it. Addiction, rather than outright enslavement. As far as I know, he’s never had a vampire for a pet before. They wouldn’t interest him: too simple; too direct. Too insensitive to magic. Whereas Spike….” Picking up the mug, Giles took a cautious sip.

Buffy asked softly, “What’s he doing to Spike?”

“Whatever he pleases. If it’s allowed to continue, not even the fact that he needs Spike to be reasonably coherent to manipulate the stone will matter. Ethan breaks his toys. And then discards them. He loses interest, walks away, leaving others to clean up his messes. Others would have to…dispose of whatever was left.” Giles met Buffy’s anxious eyes squarely. “Spike is formidable enough in himself. After Ethan was done with him, he would be wholly random. Wholly out of control. That…would have to be dealt with.”

“No,” said Buffy. “No way!”

The Lady said coolly, “Ending would be a kindness. So it must not be allowed to reach that point.”

Willow, who’d been sent off to do a locator spell, came back downstairs carefully carrying a folded map, held level like a tray, and a small glass jar half full of red powder. She knelt down by Giles, showing him the map, commenting, “He’s not anyplace. Not here, not in the state, not in North America. I’d have to get some different maps to check anyplace else.”

“No need,” said Lady Gates in a distant voice. “They’re dimension-hopping. Rayne is opening portals, perhaps to test out the stone and Spike’s ability to tune and focus it.”

“What makes you think so?” Buffy challenged.

“My dear, consider who I am,” said the Lady dryly. “When a portal is opened anywhere, it’s through me, and I know it. That is my nature and my power.” She looked to Giles. “Most cross-dimensional traffic is random and accidental. The interstices gape and close to accommodate the flexing of the space-time continuum, and sometimes things fall through. It’s not hard to open a portal and pass through if you don’t care where you end up. However, interdimensional motion to and from a fixed point is unusual, especially within a limited span of time. I should be able to locate them; and the next time they return, lock them down. But to do that, I need full access to my own resources.”

Giles nodded politely. “I understand.”

“Geezul Pete, I thought she’d never leave!” Dawn exclaimed, springing up and spinning around on her toes. Coming to a halt, she did a friendly little finger wave. “Hi, Giles.”

“Hello, Dawn.”

“How come you know all this about what Ethan Rayne wants, how he behaves, how he treats his pets?”

“I’ve made something of a study of it,” Giles said, which wasn’t an answer but was plainly all he intended to say. “Is there any least chance of something resembling a sandwich?”

“Baloney?” Buffy offered. “Or I could make baloney and peanut butter.”

Giles shuddered. “If you must.” As Buffy headed for the kitchen, Giles asked, “Dawn, how long is the Lady apt to be?”

Dawn made an open, airy gesture. “Could be an hour or a year.” Then she frowned and changed her mind. “Not long. Not considering Spike…. Willow, if she can lock them into this dimension, I guess the rest will be up to you: stopping whatever he tries until we can take Spike back. How will you do that? Have you ever faced a Chaos Mage?”

“No,” Willow admitted. “I’ve never been in a full-scale wizard’s duel, and now that I think about it, I really don’t like the idea. Giles, can’t you--?”

“I hold myself ready to assist,” Giles said, finishing the tea and setting the cup down. “However, Dawn is right--the actual opposition will fall to you, Willow. I can store a certain amount of power that you can draw upon.”

“Me, too,” Dawn chimed in.

“Are there rules?” Willow asked Giles worriedly. “Do you take turns? Where should I look to research this?”

Collecting his watch and putting it away, Mike asked Dawn, “They done with me here?”

She looked surprised and disappointed. “Don’t you want to stay and help?”

“Got my own line on that and my own business to tend to. Don’t know much about magic except it smells bad, so there’s not a lot of help I’m apt to be with whatever you all will be doing.” Feeling extremely daring, he smoothed her hair down her cheek and patted her shoulder. “I expect I’ll get my oar in some way…. I’m real glad you’re talking to me again. I won’t never do what made you fall out with me before.” He smiled ruefully. “Find some new way to be dumb, most like.”

“It’s hard, without a soul, to know where the limits are,” Dawn commented, which maybe was forgiveness. “Or even why there are any limits to begin with. If it’d been me you were taking pot-shots at, you would have held back, wondered if I’d be mad or truly hurt. But since it was Spike, you figured you knew. You just didn’t take me into account.”

“I won’t never not take you into account again. Not on purpose. Except if I don’t know no better,” offered Mike humbly.

She slipped fingers into his palm. “If you don’t have to go this minute, maybe you’d help me with my presents. I didn’t really have much chance to look at them, and I have to know what’s from who to write the thank-you notes.”

“Oh, I’d bet you’d know, all by yourself,” Mike said, accepting being towed across the hall to the den by that fingertip touch. “For instance, guess who gave you a stock certificate.”

“Just as long as one of ‘em isn’t a severed hand. I think that would be pretty major industrial-strength ick.”

“He didn’t want to,” Mike said earnestly, as Dawn seated herself by the scatter of open presents and wrapping paper. “He was trying his best not to.”

“Yeah, one thing Spike isn’t is a practical joker. So we’re spared that, at least.” Lips pursed and face solemn and intent, Dawn took up the small glass dragon carefully by the back and set it in her open palm. Not looking up, she commented, “I guess I know who gave me this.”

“Expect you do. Sort of like giving you a snowflake: you know it’s not gonna last. Don’t you be upset if it gets busted--it’s just for now, to remember. Not to keep. It’s not strong that way, to last.”

“Maybe it could,” Dawn argued. “Maybe it will. It’s a dragon, after all, and I found out the hard way that no matter how delicate they look, they’re really strong and fierce and dangerous!”

“Won’t dispute it with you. If anybody would know, it’d be you. Just didn’t want you to expect of it anything it didn’t have in it, to give. Didn’t want to give you something you’d feel responsible for…or something that would ever make you sad.”

“And aren’t we all about the subtext tonight!” Dawn set the dragon down on an open part of the table and looked up at him brightly. Then her expression shifted to curious, pensive. “Or maybe not. Maybe the text is all there is, and it’s not fair to read more into it. OK: who gave me this spectacularly ugly scarf?” She held it up with two fingers as though it were a dead rat.

“That was from Janice.”

“I always suspected Janice was colorblind. So that’s two accounted for. How about the earrings?”

“That was Harris.”

Mike had been gradually circling the table, pushing chairs in to get by, and had now arrived at Dawn’s side, at her right hand, as she continued to inventory the presents. He breathed her scent, that rose to him. She smelled exactly like herself, and that was part of how her eyes flashed, amused, wary, and curious, when she glanced at him, and part of how her fingers grasped things, all precise, like calipers. Part of the odd angle her elbow made, lifted a little away from her, when she reached. Part of the solemn part in her hair, right down the center, and the smooth curve of forehead and the hair so silken and soft to either side, falling from there past her shoulders.

Doing his own inventory, Mike found all as it should be. He touched her hair, at the back of her neck. If she felt the touch she didn’t object, which probably was all that mattered.

**********

Taking the bike, Mike was back at the factory within fifteen minutes. Checking with Huey, he found all as it should be: the fledges who’d been digging were drunk and unconscious. Mike was under orders to dispose of them. But he’d thought about that on the way back and come to a different decision.

“Lock ‘em down,” he told Huey, “and let ‘em be. You keep watch. Nobody comes in or goes out except I say so.”

“Spike said--”

“Spike ain’t here. Till he is, you go by my word. You too, Emil,” Mike added over his shoulder. “A straight matter of stand up, or stand down. You want to try me on?”

Emil, as big as Mike and a good deal older, lifted both hands, taking himself out of contention. “What you call is fine by me. No objection here.”

Mike switched his attention to Huey, who plainly wasn’t happy with the situation and was even older than Emil. Huey responded bluntly, “Don’t like it. Don’t think you’re up to being in charge. Spike never named you second, not in so many words. But he did name you his get, and he’s been using you for lead, most times, so I guess it’ll have to do. You answer for it, though.”

“I will,” Mike agreed. “If Spike wants to take it out of my hide later, then that’s how it will be. In the meantime, I have the call. Let the fledges sleep it off. Huey, you double check everything Spike had going, make sure it’s running right, they’re not waiting for something from us to go ahead. If they do, and it’s money, Slayer, she has the same rights over the account as Spike does. She’ll see to it. If you find any like that, make a list. I’ll deal with her. Anybody Spike was supposed to meet with, put ‘em off, say we’ll get back to ‘em. Don’t give no reason. As far as anybody else goes, Spike’s here and nobody knows any different. Nobody knows his business or has any right to. Except the Slayer, and I’ll deal with her however’s needed.”

It occurred to Mike that more than Huey and Emil needed to know this. So he sent Emil to gather up the crew while he and Huey split up contacting the SITs. Spike had always included them, so Mike would do the same. Whether or not they chose to go along, that was up to them.

Since Amanda was the one always least eager, most likely to pull out, Mike did that call himself. When he’d got through a layer of parents and a younger brother and actually was talking to her direct, he said, “’Manda, it’s Mike. We’re having a thing tonight. Has to do with Spike. I’m briefing on it in fifteen. If you’re coming, you be here. Yeah: at the factory.” Without waiting for any answer, Mike ended that call and hit the number for Kennedy, but only got the machine she and Rona shared at the boarding house. He left pretty much the same message for them there and figured his duty toward them was done. Either they’d show, or they wouldn’t, and Mike didn’t much care which.

Wanted to play it, as far as he could, the way he thought Spike would have wanted but wasn’t gonna let himself be hamstrung by that neither.

He hadn’t fed yet today, and that was all right. He figured it gave him a bit of an edge, and he might well need that.

Emil had rousted out what of the crew still happened to be around: fifteen fighters, not counting Huey or Emil. Three short. Probably off helling around, hunting. Mike would give them a lesson about what “on call” meant, next chance he got.

“All right,” he said, surveying them. “Spike’s been taken, and we’re gonna take him back. Nobody says a word about it, outside. I’ll personally dust anybody who--”

Mary interrupted grimly, “Digger?”

“Don’t think so. Not directly. Though he may send back-up, and if he does, we take them out. Not a one gets through. And if he does, we’ll know and settle up for it later. The one we know about is that he-witch I’ve had you tracking, the last couple of nights. Huey and Emil, they're minding the store. Gonna split the rest in half. One bunch, check out everyplace we’ve found so far where he’s been lairing. If they’re all empty, the mark is the freshest one found, that big place on Crawford. If he’s gone back to one of the others, and you get fresh trace, call and tell Huey and he’ll relay to me.”

A new fighter, called himself Fury, piped up, “Don’t have enough phones.” Len, still intent on getting above himself, smacked him before Mike did, pointing out that there were public call boxes on nearly every corner. Fury backed off. So that was settled.

“It’s possible,” Mike resumed, “but not likely, you may run across Spike himself, or his trace. If you do, take him down and hold him. He’s off his head.” He saw several vamps shaking their heads or otherwise looking real unwilling to take Spike on, crazy or not. Mike reconsidered. “All right, do this instead. You come on him, you shadow along and send word, like I said before. Don’t think it’ll happen, but if it does, that’s what you do. All right?”

Len asked, “What’ll the other half be doing?”

“Some to lay an ambush, a little away from the mark, for any back-up Digger sends. The rest, I have another errand for. Julia, you lead off checking the lairs--you get four, besides yourself. Choose ‘em out. Len, you lead off on the ambush. You get five. The rest are with me, to run my errand. Ford, bring the car around.”

Everybody looked, because there was hammering on the outside door. Emil went off to check and returned with Amanda and Rona, in street clothes: they hadn’t even taken time to change into the colors.

Scowling, Rona called, “This better be good!”

Spike always allowed the SITs a lot of latitude, didn’t slap ‘em down for mouthing off to him, so Mike put up with it too. For now.

“You heard from the Slayer?” he asked.

Amanda shook her head, and Rona said, “Not a peep, at least that I know of.”

“You’re with me, then.”

Hands on hips, Rona demanded, “What’s with Spike?”

“Tell you later,” Mike decided.

“But it ain’t even fifteen minutes yet!”

“I lied. Len, take two more on the ambush. SITs are with me. We'll hook up with you later." Looking around, he asked, "You got your tasers?”

“What do you think we are: stupid?” Rona came back at him.

“Maybe. You’re not wearing the smell. So you’d best stick close,” Mike commented, heading for the door. The pair not chosen out by the leads he’d named knew enough to follow. Which gave him four, besides himself. Plenty enough for the errand he had in mind.

When they’d all piled into the ancient, sagging car, Mike directed, “Casa Mike.”

Except for the SITs, none of them was armed. That was how Spike liked it. Kept the fighting pretty even, everything hanging on the balance of strength, skill, and ferocity. Mike, he’d always thought a different way.

It was his incendiaries that’d taken out most of the Turok-han. He was, by training and inclination, a sniper, even though that was from the before. Mike liked the odds in his favor and liked the things that modern weaponry could do. With no present need, he’d moved his small armory to the basement of Casa Mike and added to it any time the chance to acquire good ordnance on the cheap presented itself.

Fuck magic. Mike was a hell of a lot more comfortable with an M-16 firing .50 caliber armor-piercing rounds. Take a vamp’s head right off or blow a hole in its chest big enough to stick your fist into, except of course they’d dust first. Plastique, if there was leisure to place a few shaped charges. Some incendiary grenades. Against vamps, even highway flares could be good weapons, and he had those in quantity. See how Digger liked them apples, not to mention that bastard, Ethan Rayne. Mike had something extra special in mind for him.

Let the Slayer take the inside and do him if she could, her and the witch. But if he got past them, if he came outside and tried to get clear, Mike would blow that fucker into confetti. Then see what kind of magic he could do.

**********

Dawn was pleased not to have to fight about going along, even though it was because of the Lady. It was the Lady who’d determined what Rayne’s go-back-to point was: the mansion on Crawford, that had been Angel’s (as much as it was anybody’s: Dawn doubted Angel had ever held title). Spike would know its advantages of defensibility and isolation, so Rayne had chosen it for a base.

And without Dawn as conduit, the Lady wouldn’t have the eyes and ears she needed to follow what was going on while retaining access to her own powers.

It made Dawn feel a bit like a hole in the air, everybody looking past her, beyond her, or through her, but better to be in charge of her own body than be a helpless bystander as she’d been since the Lady had decided to usurp her and take up residence.

But not everybody looked through her: Mike hadn’t. And he knew for certain, instantly, whether it was her driving, or the Lady, even when she hadn’t said a word or twitched so much as a finger. Smell, maybe. Anyway, he knew, and that was a good counterbalance to Dawn’s bouts of suspecting that she wasn’t really real, the way Buffy was, or Xander, or Willow. That she was just a fiction everybody had tacitly agreed on, not an actual person in her own right. A dimensional key: just like the sodding Chaos Stone, that nobody could ever mistake for a person.

A tool; an open door; a hole in the air.

Since her displacement, her confidence in her own reality was pretty much at an all-time low. She wished Mike had stayed. Or that Spike was here, where he should be. They’d all forgotten her once, and that had been scary and horrible. Everybody except Spike, who’d slowly forced them all to remember or at least accept that he did. Spike had held on.

Now she figured it was her turn. If not feeling quite real was the price of catching hold of Spike and hauling him back to a safe shore, then she didn’t grudge it, or the Lady’s voice periodically muttering in the back of her mind, wanting to know this, or wanting her to say that: not in residence, but not absent, either. When real people had voices talking to them in their heads, they were crazy…or occasionally telepaths. But Dawn was neither. She wasn’t 100% sure, anymore, what she was. That scared her.

Buffy accepted her, loved her; but Buffy had forgotten like the rest and didn’t worry about ridiculous things like not being real.

But Dawn’s connection to Spike, that was bedrock. They’d sometimes get fed up with each other and go off like rockets, but those times were just the passing storms that punctuated weather.

If it was her turn to hold on, she certain sure wasn’t letting go. Whatever that came to entail.

Right now it entailed having the Front Seat of Honor between Buffy, driving, and Giles, trying hard not to watch her drive. Willow and Xander were in the middle seat, Willow anxiously researching in a big book laid across her lap, Xander helpfully holding a flashlight for her. Anya had claimed other business. Kennedy was in the back.

They hadn’t been able to reach Rona, but Amanda’s mom said there’d been a call for ‘Manda and she’d gone out, the mom mildly concerned that it was a school night and now past nine. Dawn had learned long since that ‘Manda had somehow ended up with all the guts in that family: all the rest were wispy, indecisive doofuses. Doofi? Anyway, from that, there seemed a good chance they were with Mike--maybe for tonight's sweep, on the principle that with Spike or without, the show had to go on, right?

Willow was ticked because she’d hoped to have all three SITs for an energy drain, via Giles. Dawn privately thought that was idiotic, just nervousness, since through Dawn Willow had one of the Powers of the universe to draw on. Maybe Lady Gates’ power tasted funny or something. Or maybe Willow was afraid of it--like it would be too much, more than Willow could handle without going black-eyed and veiny-faced.

Turning and kneeling on the seat--no seat belt constraining the middle position--Dawn inquired buoyantly, “What if it’s a trap?”

Looking, wide-eyed, up from her spell book, Willow exploded, “Geez, Dawn, be a little depressing, why don’t you?”

“Well, it could be,” Dawn argued reasonably. “Maybe he doesn’t really want Spike at all, or much, and Spike’s just bait to bring you into it. Or Buffy. I’m sure Digger would love a chance to get rid of Spike and the Slayer at one go. Then he could do whatever he pleased.”

Giles said flatly, “It’s not a ruse. Ethan needs Spike to manipulate the Chaos Stone. Or at least not primarily a ruse…. A valid point. Buffy?”

Facing straight front, Buffy said, “Get in, get Spike, get out. How’s that for a plan?”

Dawn looked back and forth between them like a tennis match.

“Perhaps slightly lacking in subtlety,” Giles commented mildly. “Might an initial reconnaissance be in order?”

“You just don’t want to go back to the mansion,” Buffy charged.

“It’s not among my favorite places, no. But that’s of no consequence. I didn’t come several thousand miles to stop short a few meters from the goal. If you can face the unpleasant memories embedded in that place, I can certainly do the same. Dawn, explain to me about Mike, please. On the phone, he identified Spike as his sire. At first, I assumed that meant Spike was hunting again, and Mike was some unfortunate he’d turned. But now that I’ve met him, I know that’s not the case. He’s not a stupid fledge, overwhelmed with the change. I gather he occupies a position of some authority and responsibility within Spike’s developing court. So in what way can he regard Spike as his sire?”

Accepting the blatant change of topic, Dawn slid back down on the bench seat. “Angelus turned him, about six years ago.”

“Ah, yes: the demonstration. Now I recollect where I’ve seen him before. Persuading Angel that there is actual inheritance through the demon, and the same demon is transferred in the turning. I’ve produced some preliminary notes on the subject; when there’s time, I’d like to do a full-scale monograph for the Council journal. Privately circulated, of course, but quite prestigious in certain circles. It is, to put it mildly, a revolutionary concept: nothing along those lines has ever been suggested, much less documented. So that’s the Michael concerned, that I’ve written several reams about. How embarrassing, not to have recognized him. I hope I didn’t offend him, not greeting him properly.”

“Mike’s different,” Dawn responded, thinking it out. “He’s just on the edge of becoming a mature vamp. So he acts different and probably looks different--sharper, quicker, more confident than even a few months ago. Not looking, every minute, for somebody to tell him what to do…or not do. Standing his ground. Taking calculated risks, not just diving in blind. It’s no big deal, your not knowing him, Giles. Hardly anybody bothers to tell one vamp from another. Except for Spike. He won’t tolerate being ignored. Mike, he’s cool with it.”

She wished Buffy had accepted her suggestion to let Mike know Rayne had chosen the mansion as a base, to call him into it. But to Buffy, the idea of vamps as back-up (any that weren't Spike) wasn't worth considering.

Now that she no longer had to be officially mad at him, Dawn would have felt better if Mike was along. And she knew that nobody, not even Buffy, would be more determined to get Spike out in one piece than Mike. Sometimes somebody utterly single-minded and way dangerous was very comforting to have on your side. But Buffy wouldn't hear of it and the Slayer was nothing if not stubborn and bossy.

“Which still doesn’t explain why he’d claim to be Spike’s get,” Giles pointed out. “True, he’d be of the Aurelian bloodline….”

“It was Spike who claimed him,” Dawn replied. “Publicly. And if Spike says, and Mike agrees, who’s gonna argue with them?”

“Still another…connection of Angel’s that Spike’s inherited, then. He seems to make rather a habit of it.”

They both waited, but Buffy was attending strictly to the driving and offered no comment.

Giles continued, “I thought my mild sense of deja vu was merely because….”

“Because he looks as though he could be Riley Finn’s cousin,” Dawn supplied accurately. “Buffy thought so, too. Spike puts it down to something he calls ‘the Wild Geese syndrome.’ Mike was a soldier and then a mercenary, in the before. And then Riley, with the Initiative.”

“Yes, I see. Hired violence: Ireland’s chief export, for centuries. He’s become Spike’s enforcer, then?”

“Spike is his own enforcer.”

“Yes, quite.”

“What’s Ethan doing to him?” Dawn asked, echoing Buffy’s earlier question.

Giles sighed and bowed his head. In a voice as distant and cold as stars, he replied, “Bewitching him. It’s what he does. Until he grows bored, or his…pet successfully defies him.”

There was subtext there. Giles probably didn’t think Dawn could hear it, but she did. She wondered, Did you defy him? Or did he just get bored and indifferent, and let you leave? And are you entirely sure which? But with new tact that maybe was part of turning seventeen, she didn’t ask.

Buffy braked the SUV, set the hand brake, and turned the key. “We’re here. Or close, anyway. Per the plan of our master strategists, I’ll go have a look around. Willow, you get charged up, or whatever you do. Then we’ll go in.”

Everybody got out. Buffy retrieved her favorite sword and a bag of stakes from the back, then vanished into the adjoining park. Holding hands, Giles and Willow began chanting quietly on the sidewalk. Presently each held out a hand: Willow to Xander, and Giles to Kennedy, who looked decidedly nervous and not all that eager to hold hands with two guys. Because after a minute or so, Xander and Ken were directed to make contact, completing the circle. The air around them seemed to thicken like lemon Jell-O with chopped carrots, except the carrot bits were wandering sparks.

Dawn mooched off down the block, because she wasn’t a direct part of any of it. She didn’t scout; she didn’t do magic. She was only the vehicle and the vessel for the Lady, who well might do both. Though probably not: the Lady didn’t think Spike could survive, caught in the middle of a direct confrontation between a Chaos Mage and one of the Powers. Sure, the Lady could likely squash Rayne like a bug. But not without squashing Spike, too, because of the connection there. And the Powers mostly didn’t squash people like bugs--it wasn’t their style. They watched, and hung back, and debated endlessly, involved but not concerned.

If they decided to act, it was by pushing, and nagging, and bringing intangible pressures to bear to edge events in one direction or the other, generally so glacially slowly that nobody would notice anything had moved until a couple of centuries afterward, if at all. As bad as Ents for godawful slow. Except sometimes, when something they considered important had come to crisis sooner than they’d expected. Then they’d choose an Instrument or a Champion and shove him headlong into the middle of it. Whether he wanted to or not. Whether he survived it or not. Whether it entirely fucked up the rest of his life or not. As long as their purpose was achieved, what did they care?

(The Lady imparted, “You misvalue the long view; through you, we’ve gained some appreciation for the short term and the immediate. Both have their wisdoms.”)

Dawn shot back rancorously, “Fuck the wisdoms. Spike is crazy again, and hurting, and you don’t give a single damn.”

(“If he can be spared, he will be spared. And you are spared knowing what a wretched, self-centered, sybaritic, sadistic reptile this Rayne is. If you would be a child forever, you’ll be spared such things. Cherish your innocence: it comes at a price others pay, that you may have this luxury. Be grateful. Now hush and don’t interrupt me. I’m tying a dimensional knot.”)

Dawn stuck out her tongue and rancorously kicked a stone. Then she patted her overalls pocket, where her taser was. At least maybe she could fight. Hard to ignore somebody zapping you in the ghoolies. That would give her great satisfaction.

**********

Buffy gave the mansion a cursory once-around because Giles thought she should. She didn’t expect to see anything, and she didn’t.

The chimney breathed smoke. It was a cool evening: the mage had lit a cozy fire in the fireplace. How nice.

At least it was confirmation that Rayne was resting after the day’s dimension-hopping exertions. In place and now locked in, thanks to the Lady’s closing the ways against him.

Once, Buffy had known the mansion so well. Every dip in the ground, every vista through the trees, all of it golden and dreamlike. Now the ground was ankle-deep in fallen leaves and untended, forlorn. Dropping down from the retaining wall, she was in the paved pocket garden where she’d had her final fight with Angelus. Its fountain was dry and clogged with slimy leaves. All the riot of flowers were dead brittle stems. Angel had literally courted the light, she recalled: trimmed away branches to let it shine at noon into this little sunken court so he could gaze at it from a safe distance out the window. Enough to keep the flowers alive….

She’d been driven back against the wall, just there. Against Angelus’ hateful jeering that she’d lost everything and had nothing left, she’d found herself declaring that she had herself and catching the sword blade between her two hands. The fight had turned then, on that realization.

Then, being alone and knowing it had been a strength. With only herself on the line, all fights were simple, although she’d lost a few along the way. Died a couple of times. Not until Spike had she ever truly let anyone into her essential Slayer solitude. Her friends, they helped, sure. But when push came to shove, she was the one in the lead and on the line. They were concerned but not committed--they could walk away anytime. Like Oz had. Like Angel had. Like even Willow and Xander had, after a fashion. Unavailable to her, anyway.

Not Spike, though. Spike stayed--even when she hadn’t wanted him to. Like candle lighting candle, he took his purpose from hers and was right out there on the line along with her unless she forced him away, refused him completely. Once, she’d actually succeeded in driving him away, and she’d thought he was gone for good: when he’d been off winning the soul. It had been a bitter satisfaction.

And then, despite everything, he’d come back. Crazy, filthy, starving, frightened, helpless, a whirlwind of confusion. A burden and a responsibility, not a help. Not at first. Except that just the fact of him made her know she wasn’t alone. Couldn’t be, even when she wanted to. She was half of a wacky set, all crooked edges and sharp points, and she’d finally resigned herself to that. It’d been a while longer before she’d taken any joy from the connection; any peace; any love. But they’d been there for her all along, if she’d only had the eyes to see and the grace to accept.

Love was finally such a little word, such a Hallmark sentiment, for what Spike was to her now.

So all breath was driven from her body when she looked in the window and saw them there, by the fire: Rayne, with his neat, dry, creased, quizzical face and flying dark eyebrows, like he knew a naughty secret and was gonna inflict it on you, sitting across Angel’s big wood chair, one leg thrown over the arm padding, back propped at crooked ease into the corner, looking down and laughing, all lazy gaiety. Laughing back at him was Spike, stretched out on the carpet like a great pale cat; eyes wide and wild and drawn oblong with liner, like an odalisque’s; all smooth power in repose, his torso painted with chocolate shadows and tangerine highlights by the flames and shining beyond that: oiled, sleek, leaned easily on a bent arm, hand propping his tilted head.

Rayne was feeding him something--offering, then drawing away, happily teasing and playful. The faint blush on Spike’s skin meant he’d already fed well and to his satisfaction.

Around Spike’s neck was a broad black leather collar dotted with steel studs. The match to his watchband and to his belt. Very decorative. Very deliberate.

Buffy wrenched away and threw up into the dry fountain.

Spike would hear. Couldn’t be helped.

She took the wall at a bound, still fighting the impulse to heave.

She’d visualized something like his captivity by the First: chains; bruises; wounds. Not luxurious collared ease. Nothing like this. Nothing she’d ever imagined.

She ran, practically headlong, into Giles. Until he offered her his handkerchief, she didn’t realize she was crying, and ducked her head and let herself be walked away a little distance from the others, all standing by the SUV and staring at her.

“Buffy, what is it?” Giles asked her with all the quiet and concern she so conspicuously lacked. That she’d missed so terribly, but couldn’t say so because Giles was a grown-up and had his own life, and rebuilding the Council and monographs on Mike and yada yada.

She clutched his lapels and sobbed. She was the Slayer. She was allowed.

“My dear child. What has he done?”

“I think maybe,” (Buffy blew her nose explosively, then scrubbed at her eyes: wrong order, didn’t care) “we should just leave it, OK? Lady Gates is this big Power, why can’t she just shut off the Hellmouth, too? Why does she need Spike to stop it? Why can’t she just let him alone and…and let him just be happy? He looked happy, Giles. And if he can be, why not just let him be? Why do I have to jump in and ruin everything?”

“Buffy.” Giles patiently teased the handkerchief out of her fist and presented her with another from a hip pocket. She imagined him producing an endless stream of handkerchiefs like a magician pulling scarves out of people’s noses, which was gross and not at all magical. She was giggling and sobbing at the same time. “Buffy, it’s an enchantment. A spell. You’ve been bespelled yourself, a time or two--remember? While it lasts, it’s utterly convincing. You can’t see past it or around it. It simply is. Which is among the reasons why I came. Age sometimes grants perspective, Anya aside.” He waited for her to notice his small, pursed smile.

“But…he looked happy. And strange. And…not mine,” she blurted.

“Would Spike, of his own volition, ever deliver to Dawn a severed human hand?”

“No,” Buffy admitted.

“He has no choice, or very little, in what he does, how he seems. We all have monsters within that can be teased out, flattered into complaisance…captured, for a time. Spike’s is merely more accessible. Closer to the surface, unsouled as he is. And unsouled as he is, he has nothing that can withstand such beguilement. It would be most unfair to judge him by what he cannot help and can’t control. What’s been imposed on him by another. Give any of us what we believe to be our heart’s desire, even if it’s a complete fraud, and there are few of us who could resist being ensnared. In that place, Drusilla came to me as Jenny and I told her at once what I’d endured torture rather than reveal. Don’t judge him, Buffy.”

“But…there was oil. And a frickin’ collar!”

“That’s right: be angry. We must go and do this now. Spike is helpless, and in prison, even though the walls may not be visible to us. We cannot leave him there. For his sake, and for ours. When the spell is lifted, you’ll see things more clearly, more truly. Wipe your eyes. It’s time.”

**********

Dawn was nervous, going to confront whatever had freaked Buffy so totally. Buffy, all grim and furious, wouldn’t talk about it, just led off down the sidewalk. Spell book at last set aside, Willow trotted after, and Giles, and Dawn last, glancing at shadows, clutching her taser.

After feebly protesting, Xander and Kennedy were tucked, fast asleep, in the back of the locked SUV. Drained of vitality, they weren’t up to much. So it was just the four of them.

A ruckus started up in the park, off to the right, out of sight. Buffy’s head whipped around, but she just went faster. They all broke into a run.

Following Buffy, they were headed straight for the front door: real subtle, Dawn thought. Maybe it was locked. Didn’t really matter, because Buffy tucked her sword under her arm, grabbed the ornate looped opener thingy two-handed, and hauled the door off its hinges, bang, and pitched it into the yard. Buffy tended to do things like that.

(“Stand ready,” directed the Lady’s cool intention, within her.)

Yeah, right. Ready for what?

What came off was the door. What came out was about half a dozen vamps, snarling and stinky. Buffy went high, with the sword. Dawn went low, with the taser. Willow dithered and Giles economically took out the vamps Dawn had downed, with stakes produced from his deep overcoat pockets. There was a lot of dust. They went inside.

“Why, Ripper!” somebody caroled from out of sight. “What a surprise! Sorry, must dash. Things to subvert, people to do.”

It was something Spike said, slightly skewed. Suddenly Dawn was hot with indignation.

Giles replied coolly, “I think you may find that difficult, Ethan. You have something of ours. We want it back.”

Sidling in behind, Dawn found herself in a large, paneled room. Across from the door, to her left now, there was a fireplace with a fire burning in it. Behind her she’d noticed another door, smaller, with a window to either side. Everything was old and dusty. Moths had been feasting on the carpet. A big padded wooden chair by the fire had been overset, trailing scraps of canvas lining. Everything smelled like dust, mildew, and mice. If the house wasn’t haunted, it should have been.

The Chaos Mage, Ethan Rayne, was a skinny, unprepossessing guy in grey suit pants, a blue shirt, and what Dawn thought was called a smoking jacket--kind of a short robe with red plush panels at the shoulders. Pretty much backed up against the far wall, in front of a ratty looking but ornate couch with curved legs and lion paw feet. Grinning broadly, as though this eruption into his Vincent Price living room was the most delightful thing he could imagine.

Yeah, right. Sure.

Crouched beside him was Spike: bare-chested, in some outfit that made him look like a circus performer in search of a trapeze. Black, of course, and shiny. All greased up, as though for a Turkish wrestling match, like the one in Topkapi, except none of the wrestlers had worn a big black studded collar, that Dawn recalled. Absolutely Spike’s style: she wondered if he’d gotten it at skins, at the mall, where they’d found the belt to match the watch band. Of the watch he wasn’t wearing.

That was when she noticed both arms were the same: the tattoo, her verse, the poetry that meant Dawn was gone. She was so shocked she almost barged right past except the Lady told her the field had to be secured, or some crap like that, and she only rocked against Giles’ back for a second. Lucky she didn’t have her finger on the taser trigger.

Now that she was freaked, Buffy was calm. “We’ve come for Spike.”

“The Slayer, come to reclaim her pet--how touching. But what if he chooses not to go?” Rayne laid spread fingers on Spike’s shoulder, his grin gone a little rigid. “Now would be a good time, dear boy.”

Spike flashed to game face yet somehow looked no different. He hadn’t said a word or shown any sign of recognizing them, or understanding that this was supposed to be a rescue. Both his arms were braced forward, and his hands were set on a chunk of rock: presumably the fabled Chaos Stone. Otherwise known as the ugly chunk of rock that was doing absolutely nothing whatever.

(“Of course not,” the Lady contributed to the general sense of everybody being strange and off-balance. Profoundly off. “Be prepared to stand aside.”)

Spike bent crooked and flinched: Rayne was hurting him.

Taking Willow’s hand, Giles said, “The ways have been shut. Release Spike and you can go where you will.”

The whole room went strange then in a way Dawn could only see, not describe. It wavered. It seemed new and rich, and tatty and old, each shading into the other. Then it seemed like a mouth about to bite down with big black teeth. Dark snapped like a burnt-out bulb, then flickered. Willow and Giles were doing the yellow Jell-O thing, and Willow had one arm extended, fingers spread, in a sort of stop gesture. She was muttering and sometimes shouting in some language Dawn had yet to acquire and the Lady didn’t bother interpreting for her. In one of the flickering moments, Dawn saw that although the contest was presumably between Rayne and Willow, he and Giles were the ones looking at one another with a terrible sadness.

Then she was shoved aside, within herself, but still enough present to feel her hand go out and fling something invisible, hot, and tingly. She seemed to have thrown it at Spike, since he cried out a vowel sound and collapsed, curling into himself and making a keening noise, rocking and trying to curl tighter still.

He’d fallen away from the stone. The black smacked down like a blown fuse and then was gone. The room was its tatty self again, and Willow was crying and leaning into Giles’ supporting arms. The stone was gone. And so was Ethan Rayne.

(“Not interdimensional,” observed the Lady in a vexed tone of mind. “Teleported. The wretch must have had a retrieval spell set on himself, ready to be triggered. Devious. At least he was unable to take Spike with him.”)

Buffy had dropped the sword and was down on her knees next to Spike, trying to get him to uncurl. He wouldn’t, twisting away from her, wrapping arms over and around his head, dragging back whatever she tried to ease straight, still making that noise. Still suffering.

Dawn dazedly figured out she was back at the wheel again and demanded, “What did you do?”

Her sense of the Lady was distant now: retreating. (“He entrusted you with it. It was therefore symmetrical he receive it again from your hand. We have returned his soul to him. That in turn allowed him to choose. He has chosen.”)

Sitting back on her heels, Buffy was holding up both hands, shiny with whatever grease or oil Spike’s skin was covered with. Looking up at Giles in surprised distress, she announced, “It burns.”

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